UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY - …

P N hilosophy

2015-2016

ews

INSIDE

Wayne Sumner's Brilliant (But Brief) Legal Career

Roseman Lecture 2015 Global Justice: From Theory to Practice

In Memoriam: Francis Sparshott 1926-2015

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

CONTENTS

2 Philosophy News

Welcome & Reports

3 Brad Inwood

8 Wayne Sumner's Legal Career 10

Roseman Lecture 2015

12 Ergo

14 Fackenheim Portrait

15

In Memoriam Francis Sparshott 16 People & Awards

18 Book Launch 2015

23

Philosophy News

philosophy.utoronto.ca

Department of Philosophy University of Toronto 170 St. George Street, 4th Floor Toronto ON M5R 2M8 Canada

We wish to thank the generous donors to the Department of Philosophy, without whom Philosophy News would not be possible.

Tel: 416-978-3311 Fax: 416-978-8703

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Editors: Anita Di Giacomo Mary Frances Ellison

Layout: Dragon Snap Design

Philosophy News 2015-2016 edition Spring, 2016

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U n i v e r s i t y o f T o r o n t o 3

Welcome

T his year, Philosophy News, the newsletter of the UofT Philosophy Departments, comes with a brand new design; its new layout, and especially its content, will hopefully make up for the long wait; we promise to be back on schedule next time around. I hope you enjoy reading about our activities and some of the events that kept us busy during the past year.

Since last summer I have the great privilege and pleasure to serve as the chair of the Department of Philosophy on the St. George Campus and as chair of the Graduate Department of Philosophy. I didn't imagine how exciting this job actually is and how rewarding it is to head such a vibrant philosophy community. We at UofT are widely recognized as the top department in Canada and among the very best in the world. But what makes us such a special place is not only all our extraordinary faculty members, but also our outstanding undergraduate and graduate students. I owe a huge amount of gratitude to Brad Inwood, my immediate predecessor; he very unselfishly took over as chair for twelve months last year and he also prepared me for my new role, while I was taking a short break from administration. Brad shares his impressions from his year at the helm in two pieces included in this newsletter.

At the end of his one-year term as Acting and Interim Chair and after more than 30 years of outstanding service to the University of Toronto, Brad retired and moved south of the border to take up a new position at Yale University. This is a big change for us, but luckily Brad will keep close ties with UofT. Derek Allen also retired last summer after a long and distinguished career of more than 40 years, bowing out of the position of longest-serving member of the department! In this case too, one can hardly talk of retirement, since Derek keeps on teaching at Trinity College, with which he has extended and lasting ties, having served as the College's Dean of Arts and Vice-Provost. In other faculty news, Tom Berry and Jennifer Whiting resigned last year to move on to new positions at the University of Pittsburgh. In his final

year in the department, Tom served as undergraduate coordinator and tri-campus TA coordinator, and we are thankful for his excellent services in these two jobs. We thank Jennifer and Tom for their many contributions to the department and we wish them both all the best in their new environment.

Joining us for the next three years as the Senator Jerahmiel S. and Carole S. Grafstein Visiting Chair in Jewish Philosophy is Michael Morgan, Professor Emeritus of the University of Indiana, and we are delighted to welcome him. Michael has longstanding ties with UofT and has been a visitor here before. This new multi-year arrangement will greatly enhance the teaching of and research in Jewish Philosophy at UofT. Michael gave an inaugural lecture, with the title "Jewish Dialogical Philosophy", last November.

The Department is now in hiring mode. This term we are searching for three positions on the St. George Campus: for assistant professors in Ethics and Philosophy of Mind, and for an assistant/associate professor in Ancient Philosophy. The latter is a joint position with the Department of Classics. We hope to run a similar number of searches next year, since our faculty contingent has shrunk slightly in recent years and we need new colleagues to teach in our successful programs.

Philosophy remains a highly popular subject among UofT students, which is not surprising given the excellence in teaching and research of our faculty and graduate students ? not to mention the intrinsic value of doing philosophy and the many pleasures arising from it! Almost all our courses are at full capacity and we hope to expand our existing course offerings in the future. In a world where every bit of information is now just a click away, making sense of it all becomes ever more crucial. The skills acquired in a rigorous program such as philosophy are more important than ever.

One area we want to develop in the immediate future is the facilitation of our students' transition from the university to the workplace. The Department already runs various "Backpack to Briefcase" (B2B) events during the year which give students the chance to meet many inspiring alumni. We are eager to do more on this front, as it allows us to connect better with our remarkable alumni: we are always glad to hear from you and we would like to bring you back to campus more often!

Martin Pickav?

Chair, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Science

Chair, Graduate Department of Philosophy

4 Philosophy News

UTM Philosophy News

Thanks to Sergio Tenenbaum's superb leadership during the last 6 years, the UTM Department was able to start the year with a bang. Most noteworthy is the inauguration of our Socrates Project, modeled on the highly successful program of the same name on the St George campus.

The project, which involves six of our top undergraduate students, is affiliated with our introductory course, Philosophy 105. Each Socrates student leads one PHL105 tutorial each week, paid at the standard TA rate, and participates in a weekly seminar devoted both to teacher training and to deeper examination of the topics covered in the PHL105 lectures.

For the seminar, led this year by PhD candidate Belinda Piercy, each student writes an article-length paper on one of the latter topics under the supervision of a faculty member whose research is in the relevant

area. While the project has been going for only two months, it is already getting great reviews.

We are also in the process of redesigning our Ethics and Society minor under the new title Ethics, Law, and Society. We conceive of the program as designed primarily to serve students who are planning to apply to law school. (As you may know, philosophy majors are the highest scoring group on the LSAT.) This orientation will make the minor attractive to students in sociology for example, for whom our courses might not otherwise have been a strong draw.

Our other big news is that construction will soon (finally!) begin on the building, known temporarily as "North 2", that will be our new home beginning in early summer 2018 if all goes well. The architects and builders have been holding a series of meetings with the departments that will be housed there, and we have been communicating our needs for space and layout. As the plan currently stands, Philosophy will share the top floor of the building with the Sociology Department. These drawings, by the firm Perkins & Will, give an idea of the impressive facility:

More information about the new building can be found at

Diana Raffman

Chair, Department of Philosophy University of Toronto Mississauga

U n i v e r s i t y o f T o r o n t o 5

UTSC Philosophy News

C ongratulations are in order.

Karolina H?bner,

now Associate

Professor

of

Philosophy at UTSC,

was awarded

tenure at the

University of Toronto

on July 1, 2015.

H?bner is a lead-

ing Spinoza scholar

with an internation-

al reputation.

Not only that: her work deals with questions that are absolutely central both to contemporary debates and to the entire History of Philosophy. Her work has appeared Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, the Journal of the History of Philosophy, the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Archiv f?r Geschichte der Philosophie, and various important collections of essays. While on sabbatical, she is working on a book on Spinoza and Being. We very much look forward to working with her in the coming years.

In other faculty news, we welcome Anthony Bruno, who is with us on a one-year contract, after an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral research fellowhip in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bonn. Bruno works primarily on issues in metaphysics and epistemology in Kant, German idealism and 19th- and 20th-century continental philosophy.

In other news, the UTSC Association of Philosophy Students continues to be very active. In March of 2015, they hosted the annual UTSC undergraduate Philosophy conference, with 35 attendees: there were four undergraduate speakers, from the University of Michigan, the University of York (U.K.), the University of Sheffield, and McGill University. The conference concluded with a keynote talk by Russ Shafer-Landau (then at Wisconsin). This generated a lot of interesting conversation, which we continued over a large dinner attended by some 20 students, faculty members, and visitors.

The APS has continued this year, with numerous discussion nights, exam study sessions, and other activities. Notably, they have involved our graduate students in their discussions: last term, Michael Blezy spoke on Kantian appearances; and this term, Kevin Kuhl spoke on the Philosophy of Mathematics. Both talks were

very well attended, and great opportunities for UTSC students to interact with graduate students doing cutting edge work. The 2016 conference will take place on March 12, with Angela Mendelovici (University of Western Ontario) delivering the keynote. We are all looking forward to it.

Finally, the UTSC Department of Philosophy underwent a rigorous review in the Fall of 2015, with external reviewers from UBC, SFU and Western. The reviewers' report should be a key document for the Department as we go forward: its recommendations should help us in our twin goals of contributing in a major way both to the philosophical community at the University of Toronto, and to the more general research and teaching community at UTSC.

Phil Kremer

Chair, Department of Philosophy University of Toronto Scarborough

Members of the UTSC Association of Philosophy Students

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